"My rule was I wouldn't recruit a kid if he had grass in front of his house.
That's not my world. My world was a cracked sidewalk." —Al McGuire

Thursday, July 07, 2016

Bulls' hit jackpot with Wade, Crowder's Celtics score even better offseason

Outside of Golden State's signing of Kevin Durant, Marquette's returning NBA players are  on the teams that could improve the most based on offseason moves to date. I rank the 30 team's offseasons in a Thursday Breitbart piece.

Click here for a more detailed analysis of the 148 best players by team. Here are the Bulls and Celtics players worth at least four extra wins based on last year's NBA Estimated Wins and the college Value Add basketball rankings

Player20162017Extra Wins
Robin LopezNYCHI7.8
Jimmy ButlerCHICHI13.3
Dwyane WadeMIACHI11.1
Rajon RondoSACCHI7.5
Denzel ValentineMichigan St.CHI7.2
Taj GibsonCHICHI4.0
Isaiah ThomasBOSBOS13.9
Al HorfordATLBOS11.6
Jae CrowderBOSBOS6.1
Jared SullingerBOSBOS5.9
Ben BentilProvidenceBOS5.7
Amir JohnsonBOSBOS4.1
Ante ZizicCroatiaBOS4.0
Guerschon YabuseleFranceBOS4.0
Jaylen BrownCaliforniaBOS4.0
Kelly OlynykBOSBOS4.0

To walk through the math, Wade was worth an additional 11.1 wins last season, while the acquisition of Robin Lopez (+7.8) and Rajon Rondo (+7.5) and the draft of Denzel Valentine (+7.2) improve the team. Next we subtract -12.7 for the loss of Pau Gasol and the normal -6.0 atrophy for each team – the Bulls project a 15-game improvement.

Whether or not Wade can repeat his level of play at 35 years old, and whether adding a whole bunch of good players to a Celtics team that really just needs one great one is also in question, but the pick up of Al Horford seems to give the Celtics a shot to go to the next level in the East.

As for Detroit, we have Michael Gbinije having a bigger first year impact, with Henry Ellenson the bigger star over his career once he stops twisting his body and hand on his shot.

It has been a great offseason for the former MU players - let's see if it plays out next year.

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